On Mon, Jun 04, 2007 at 10:39:16PM -0700, Scott Rotondo wrote: > There are certainly other use cases besides CIFS for "system attributes" > on files. Does this case establish a protected namespace (e.g. SUNW*) > for attributes whose meaning and access control are determined by the > system? If not, could the case be expanded to do so?
Rich explained to me that the intent of these SUNW* attrs is to make it possible for existing archivers to backup these new attributes without having to know about the new APIs and without having to represent things like IMMUTABLE as Solaris extended / NFSv4 named attrs. BTW, we need a name for these new things that distinguishes them from Solaris extended / NFSv4 named attrs. And maybe we need to ask why they should be distinguished from them, but whatever -- I'll let a PSARC member (if any cares) tackle that. Given the intended purpose of the SUNW* extended attrs I think this case should set not precedent. OTOH, fsattr(5) already does set such a precedent. Nico --
